Will Miller Green Mountain Veterans For Peace
Jihad
published in the Bennington Banner
On July 21, 2000, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported that an estimated that a half million Iraqi children had died because of the U.N. sanctions imposed on Iraq following dictator Saddam Hussein’s defeat in the 1991 Gulf War. According to the report, the deaths were the direct result of malnutrition and water-borne diseases due to the embargo on food, medicine and equipment necessary for repairing war damaged domestic water purification and sewage treatment systems.
Because the sanctions were seen as being enforced by the U.S., a small group of militant Muslims called al Qaeda, led by Osama Bin Laden, declared a holy war against the United States. Their jihad began with the bombing of American embassies in Nairobi, Kenya; Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and the U.S. Navy ship, USS Cole. Their greatest jihad victory was the destruction of the World Trade Centers on Sept. 11, 2001, which killed 2,977 people.
The 9/11 outrage demanded that the U.S. seek retribution against the perpetrators and when Congress authorized George W. Bush to use all "necessary and appropriate force" against those who "planned, authorized, committed or aided" the 9/11 attacks, or who harbored said persons or groups, the U.S. Global War On Terror began.
Not only has the Global War On Terror failed to eliminate al Qaeda’s jihad, it spawned new, more wide-spread terrorist organizations such as al-Shabab in Somalia, the Haqqani Network in Pakistan, Ansar al-Sharia in Libya and Boko Haram in Nigeria, to name a few.
The most recent, virulent and most organized group is called ISIS, or ISIL, meaning the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. To date, ISIS has captured and occupied large areas of Iraq and Syria with the expressed purpose of establishing an Islamic state headed by a Caliph, or holy ruler.
As described by Alastair Crooke, former agent of the British Secret Service and author of "Resistance: The Essence of Islamic Revolution," ISIS is committed to returning all Islam to the religion that it believes was the true Islam of the Prophet, Muhammad. The fundamentalist ISIS interpretation, known as Wahhabism, requires all Muslims to pledge their allegiance to a single Muslim leader, Caliph, and purge Islam of heretics and idolaters.
The ISIS methods to achieve this goal appear to be no different from those practiced by Abd al-Wahhabi 300 years ago and include giving conquered people a choice between accepting their brand of Islam or death.
Evidence of this practice is seen by their recent slaughter of thousands of Shiite Muslims and other prisoners. ISIS followers also practice a belief that suicide, when engaged in jihad, makes one a martyr and grants him immediate entry into paradise.
When viewed through the 1980 lens of the Cold War, the U.S. perceived Islamic militants as being a force necessary to evict the Soviet Union from Afghanistan. To this end, we welcomed Osama Bin Laden’s al Qaeda and armed, equipped and trained many similar jihadists, such as the Taliban who later overthrew the Afghan government, declared an Islamic state and gave haven to al Qaeda.
Since 9/11, our Global War On Terror to defeat al Qaeda and the Taliban has, according to "The Cost of War," caused the death of 6,802 American servicemen and servicewomen, as of April 2014. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have resulted in over 200,000 Iraqi and 21,000 Afghans killed and, according to the U.K.-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism, over 1,000 civilians killed by U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, countries that the U.S. is not at war with.
On Sept. 10, President Obama announced his strategy against ISIS/ISIL: "Our objective is clear: We will degrade, and ultimately destroy, ISIL through a comprehensive and sustained counter-terrorism strategy." Although the president has repeatedly declared that no U.S. ground troops will be involved, it is difficult to believe that a well-disciplined fighting force such as ISIS can be defeated by a conglomerate of ill-trained and poorly led troops without American boots-on-the-ground. This latest iteration of our Global War On Terror strategy has all the earmarks of earlier attempts to defeat radical Muslim militants bent on holy war. The undeniable earmarks of those misdirected military undertakings have been a stream of disastrous unintended consequences; constantly changing objectives known as "mission creep"; the recruitment of more and more jihadist terrorists; violations of international treaty obligations including torture of prisoners and an assault on our Constitutional rights including unlimited government surveillance of personal communications, all done in the name of national security.
History records that some of the bloodiest wars ever fought were over religious differences. For the U.S. to engage in war against fundamentalist Muslim extremists such as ISIS and al Qaeda can only validate their purpose and ensure that they will continue their jihad against America’s war on Islam.
Andrew Shoerke of Shaftsbury is a member of the Will Miller Green Mountain Veterans For Peace.